


The Bleeding Path

by Sporadicx



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Akane POV, Angst, Background - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Drama, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Filling In the Gaps, Gen, Oneshot, Passage of time, Present Tense, Sibling Bonding, Worldbuilding, navelgazing, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28140135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sporadicx/pseuds/Sporadicx
Summary: The missing nine, that Akane counts in years.
Relationships: Kurashiki Akane/Tenmyouji Junpei, Light Field/Kurashiki Aoi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	The Bleeding Path

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Rin, who knows Akane's pain a bit more than anyone should. I love you.

_one._

Six days after their escape by rowboat, Akane gets Aoi to take her to a church.

The way she gets him to cave is a lot like water, and she supposes that's only natural. Water is on her mind when it's not Jumpy, or June, or Hongou, or the unbearable heat she keeps locked in the back of her mind. She remembers the motion of the lifeboat, soothing like a rocking chair, even though it had no right to be. Even on choppy, frothing waters, the detective's steady motion with the paddle kept her as safe as she could be. Safe like at Christmas, Aoi brought presents without fail. He never knew that she knew. That's what Akane did, still does, after all. She knows a lot of things.

She knows everything a twelve year old shouldn't know.

She wears on Aoi just like this, the wearing of water on a solid object. Weathering, smoothing, the stealing of edges. She also wears on him as a matter of distance, just like how the detective closed in on the shore and made the backdrop of the Gigantic a speck in the sky. She wears on him like how the other children's cheers made her feel very, very tired, even when her feet connected with the sandy beaches. Because Akane knew the way she knows now that she isn't actually safe. Not yet.

But Aoi is still Aoi, and he brings her to the old building when the sun crests the edges of the mountaintops and brings the world to the edge of darkness. There isn't a soul behind the stained glass, and now that she thinks about it, she rather likes it this way. She knows she's not supposed to run her fingers along the cold marble of the statues, making clothing and flesh and membrane one and the same, but she does regardless, maybe in spite of. She knows enough about the return of things, how the strangest concepts are immortalized. June the doll becomes heavy in her coat pocket along with her thoughts.

"I'm out of this dump," Aoi mutters, and she jumps; she had forgotten he still remains. She shouldn't; he scarcely leaves her side anymore, as if convincing himself she is alive. She understands. She doesn't know the answer to that question either.

Akane blinks. "Dump?"

"C'mon, it gives me the creeps." Aoi runs his hands over their opposite arms, although he's still wearing his school jacket. "Haven't you seen enough?"

Akane can only shake her head.

Aoi sighs. "I'll wait outside, then."

For the first time since her rescue, Akane is alone. She's not sure if she likes it. Her mind is water, wearing on her resistances that she learned to form since her parents died. She sees herself for who she is when she's alone.

That is, something else entirely.

When left to her own devices, Akane can't stop touching things: she runs her hand over the polished wood of the church pews, folds her skirt so she can sit on the benches, and of course, sees the statues the way Light does, the way he has to.

There are times she swears that her small fingers just pass straight through. Maybe she is remembering something she shouldn't. Maybe she is seeing another world, the way she did on the boat. Or maybe, and this thought terrifies her, they actually are.

There are several times Akane almost runs straight out the double doors, into the dying light fractured by glass, but she forces herself to keep going.

She stops before the statue of Mary Magdalene.

Akane had never paid much attention when it came time for religious study classes, but she did know the name Mary Magdalene, even if she couldn't quite grasp what it meant. Akane is struck by how beautiful she is, this apostle of apostles, one of the few women considered as a saint. Even with each cut calculated and exacting, she is the kind of beautiful that only dusk can properly capture. The slants of light hits her dress, her long hair. Chosen by the Holy Son.

She swallows, and her fingers land on her dishwater brown hair. Her pale, sallow skin. Her dull eyes. Not beautiful. Not like the statue.

Was it possible for her, even though it had to be? Even though she's standing right here, right now? Would Jumpy even look at her in nine years, enough to save her? And even if he did, would he forget her afterwards?

This thought sends her running out of the church doors, right into a waiting Aoi's arms.

"I'm sorry..."

"I know, kid," he whispers into her hair, and the trembling of his fingers tell her more than anything he's ever said. "I know."

The problem is, she does too.

On the bus ride home, her fingers begin to twist the hair just above her ear, letting it fold into the shape of a flower. She remembers the forget-me-nots and the wild daisies outside the rabbit hutch, the design on her shirt. She thinks of them, instead of relentless stone.

Because flowers are beautiful, too.

* * *

_two._

They're a long three years, before Aoi hits eighteen years old.

It's helpful that he's smart, much more book smart than Akane. Akane spends an absurd amount of time staring out windows. She can't exactly help it. The texts sprawled open on her desk often swim before her eyes, the black ink bleeds into flame and ocean surf. She does not dare close her eyes, except to blink, because of what happens late at night. When it is time to turn everything off, to let the sun set into the opposite horizon.

It's early on when she starts getting dizzy spells, and when she has to start writing everything down. She has to remember the puzzles from the Gigantic, even though these memories make her want to tear at her hair and start screaming. She has to remember the door numbers, Zero's speeches, her own actions at twenty-one years old.

_Twenty-one._ It's so far away, but it's approaching like a locomotive. Slow, cumbersome, but powerful enough to destroy.

She is fourteen before she wonders if it's hard to concentrate because she is set in what she needs to know.

Aoi insists that she needs to stay in school, although she doesn't much see the point. The minute Aoi is of age, she's going to tell him which stocks to buy and sell, at what times, all to exploit for maximum proficiency and to explode their bank accounts. It had taken forever to convince him she knows what to do – more wearing him down, all with memories of that cursed ship – but now his excitement is palpable, something Akane can put her fingers up to and grasp. That feeling is more real to her than the desk in front of her, the textbook with a bloated spine.

But he wants her here. He wants her to have a sense of normalcy, he says, what all girls and boys her age do. It is pointless, he has to know, and Akane is suspicious he just doesn't want to fill out the paperwork approving her for homeschooling, and him as a teacher. She thinks of a rusty knife before taking a deep breath.

"That's okay," she mumbles. "I can do that for him."

"Akane?"

She already has more than a few looks in her direction, most of them with narrowed eyes, and she remembers another reason she hates being at school. Before the Gigantic, she was already considered a freak, a freak with one friend who was far too normal for her. Kids can smell what is different like bloodhounds, can swarm in the waters like sharks, and after the Gigantic...

"It's nothing," she says in the same mumble.

The teacher sighs, but continues on with her lesson, and the scratching of chalk ticks like earthquakes in her ears. And that's the biggest problem of all, why she thinks school is a waste of time, why it isn't worth the effort.

Jumpy isn't even here. He _can't_ be here. They will see nothing of each other for another six years _twenty one days, eighty six hours, fifteen minutes, and thirty eight seconds_ , and each number makes her heart rend. It's an ache too old for age fourteen, too large for her little body to comprehend.

It's only natural that when she goes home, the clouds cast dark and oppressive shadows she cannot escape. It was this kind of day back at the rabbit hutch, where the sun shone bright despite all the clouds in the sky. That's the thing with rain: it drowns just like the ocean.

She spends a lot of time wondering about that Akane: not younger Akane, not past Akane, but _that_ girl, at that exact moment in time. A girl who never existed before, and certainly wouldn't after _._ A different person, something she can hardly recognize. Could she have saved those rabbits?

_No. I can't do a thing on my own._

Maybe less has changed than she thinks.

The sky spits rain on her boots, and not for the first time, she wants to burn this pair. They are just on the edge of too small anyway; she's beginning to hit her growth spurt. Even that seems pointless. She is frozen in time, forced to lay in wait.

By the time she crosses the threshold to their tiny shack of a home, she is soaking wet. Akane could not pinpoint when the sun lost its fight and the sky cracked open, shoving rain in violent torrents toward the earth below. She should have remembered when the first wave hit her hair with a violence that jarred her headband. She should have felt her skirt clinging to her bare skin like seran wrap. She should have felt the worn, faded leather of her boots chafing against socks that are probably older and thinner than she is.

"Akane." Aoi scrambles towards her. His hard-leaning expression tends to crumble when he sees her, sees her suffering, especially when he thinks he has the power to prevent it.

He never does.

"Akane, what are you doing? Why didn't you take the bus?"

Akane blinks. Her eyelashes are thick with rainwater. The droplets fall, reminiscent of tears. That's good, she thinks dully. She's done enough crying for several lifetimes. From one timeline to the next. From one life to the next.

"Aoi." Her voice cracks. For once she is not a seamless body of everything; for a moment she is a little girl back at the rabbit hutch.

His eyes flicker. He shifts through emotions like waves on a spectrum, and she has learned to read them with the efficiency of a language. Surprise, confusion, concern, alarm.

"I know it's not Christmas, and we don't have a lot of money yet, and it's all we can do to keep me in school and..."

She's rambling. Something softens in his expression. Maybe it's because he recognizes it, this side of her.

"Can..." Akane swallows. "Can I get a new pair of boots?"

He breaks open, not like the sky, but more like the eggs they tossed over the roof in science class. He pulls her forward, much more free in his affection these days than before that fateful moment she stumbled out of the incinerator. It sends a new wave of tears through her, racking, because she thinks of Mary Magdalene again when he hugs her this time. That even when no one else is watching, without Light's hearing and the detective's all-seeing eyes, that he still loves her.

Despite everything she puts him through.

Something tingles in her gut, and she hates herself for thinking of brown hair instead of white.

"Of course," Aoi whispers in her ear. "Of course you can."

* * *

If anyone asks Akane what she dreads most these days, she doesn't even have to lie. She does not think of gas masks or a voice distorter or white smoke or a knife in her back or even the licking flames of the incinerator. No. She thinks of the night, the all-encompassing night that the stars and moon do nothing to soften.

Yet, she cannot stop looking at it.

More than once, Aoi has opened her bedroom door to her tucked in her windowsill, her knees drawn up to her chest and her cheek resting against the cold glass. She always looks at him with one cheek rosy pink and the other sallow and drawn, and he snaps at her, saying she looks ridiculous and she's going to give herself frostbite. She smiles every time. She knows that won't happen. There are many more things for her to fear in the dark.

Aoi stops this time, not saying a word. She turns to look at him. He leans against the frame with all the look of an unaffected young adult, with enough bluster to tell the world it can't touch him. Akane knows the truth. There aren't many people more affected than her brother.

She watches him struggle with his words. She knows what he's going to say. Akane gets dizzy again, the way she does these days, but they usually involve books, chalk, and pencils. She thinks it's rather terrible of her, that she does not rescue him with her words.

"Do you need me to sleep in here tonight?" he asks at last, scratching the back of his head.

"No," Akane says before he finishes speaking. "No, I don't think so."

He hates it, for one. He says its silly, that it's just the part of him still growing up talking. But Akane has figured out that her demons sleep on her expression as she sleeps through the night, _if_ she does. And Aoi tosses and turns just as much as he does.

"Promise you'll come get me if you need anything?"

Akane nods.

"Promise?"

She nods again. "I promise."

He lets out a breath that is between gasp and shudder, and she closes her eyes. She lets it wash over her, the way she never lets anything sink into her skin these days.

It is another hour, maybe two, until she tries to settle into sleep.

Her nightmares have no limits. The strangest things pull from her mind these days, and again, they aren't necessarily the obvious. She falls and skins her knee. Aoi throws his arm in front of her at a crosswalk, and a car clips the curb. She drops a water glass and it shatters over the kitchen tile, tucking into all the places she can't reach. She stands up too fast. She gets a migraine from the florescent lights in a department store.

It is these lesser pains, these normal ones, that somehow scare her the most. They are not framed by Junpei, after all; she can never see them coming.

But then again, she also never saw the rabbits coming.

Junpei never let her too close; he went into the hutch alone and shouted at her not to come in. But she caught glimpses from the betraying light of the setting sun, before he arrived. She knew not to go in, but it didn't matter much. Two died from wrung necks. Another two from blood loss. The last was the one Junpei was especially keen to keep her from seeing, but again, perhaps Akane didn't change much after all. She had seen a flash of singed black fur, and the smell of cooked meat hit her nostrils anyway.

She had thrown up then, emptying her stomach near a neighboring tree.

Not for the first time, as Akane settles into her bed, dragging her ridiculous purple blanket to her chin, she wishes that Hongou grabbed her before the rabbits were murdered, before she moved away. Maybe she could have prevented their deaths. Maybe Junpei would have done anything to find her.

Maybe she wouldn't have to do this.

It is not the tongues of flame, the deranged expression of Hongou – soon Ace – or even the beeping wristwatches that haunt her at night anyway. Instead, she sees discarded dolls, smells the coppery tang of blood, Junpei's broken-toothed smile.

As always, she wakes up screaming.

* * *

Their house is empty when she wakes up, and this is a small mercy Akane isn't always afforded. She stumbles out of bed and throws up in the bathroom sink. This part doesn't happen every time, but it happens often enough.

She almost misses the boots – too big for her now but would fit one day – and a pair of purple socks with green and black accents sagged near her door just like a doll. A smile splits her face like an seismic fault, one that's a relief and hurts at the same time.

These are Zero's boots.

Akane didn't tell Aoi a single thing: not the kind she wanted, not the color, not the fitting, the type, the brand. She certainly didn't tell him to get the kind of knee-high socks she would need.

For the first time, she feels like she can do this.

"Thank you, Santa," she whispers to an empty house. Her brother still has no idea that she _knows_ , she knows everything he's done for her. Maybe one day, she would have the courage to tell him as much.

* * *

_three._

Aoi turns eighteen, and in the days leading up to his birthday, he is little more than a racehorse chomping on the bit. Naturally, he takes off like a shot the moment midnight hits. In this case, 'like a shot' means he has eighteen tabs up on two monitors and switches back and forth between like them like a gamer holed up in the basement.

Akane knows what to tell him, sure, but he's the one who knows what to do with the information she gives him. He's the one who can process what she lists off from memory, not from understanding, and apply it with an ease she envies.

Yet, she's grateful.

Their assets multiply. Aoi insists on upgrading their home, and she allows it. Mostly because the upgrade is modest: the shack that can be felled by the wrong shift of a breeze is traded for a humble apartment on the edge of town.

Aoi comes home from his other job, one that gets him out of the house or whatever. Akane doesn't much see the point, as she would love to hole herself up at home, but Aoi never asks for much, besides that she goes to school. She watches him from her spot on the couch as he stumbles through the doorway, mumbling curses. He takes off a scarf, coat, and pulls his wallet out of a pocket of his baggy pants. She keeps her chuckle to herself. Aoi is always cold, but he insists on dressing like a street thug who thinks he's in the Bahamas in the second Nonary Game.

"You win," he says.

Akane blinks.

_Hopefully,_ she almost says. She has told Aoi, reluctantly, there's only one timeline where their story ends happily. He doesn't take it well, as expected. She constantly thinks that she asks too much of him, and if she's asking too much of him, what is she asking of Junpei?

Jumpy is more of an apparition than she is, and that's _saying_ something.

She still imagines that if she stops concentrating, she'll pass right through the fabric of the couch. She'll fall through the floor, the ceiling of the next apartment, all the way through the ground, through the Earth's thick crust and to the molten core. There, she imagines, she'll burn up, right back where she started.

It's easy to think that will be her fate, in any timeline, in any circumstance. There is more than one reason she concentrates these days.

Aoi takes a deep breath as he fidgets with the bracelets around his wrists. He looks tired. It's not hard for them to look tired, particularly Aoi, with his pale skin and shock of white hair. But Akane has an easier time naming this kind of tired. To the bone, in the blood and marrow, a kind that settles over like a blanket and has no inclination to disappear.

"I talked to your school," he says. "I got my licensing, not that I'm going to use it, but they agreed to take you out of all your classes. You're free, now."

Akane freezes. This is an argument she never expected, still doesn't, to win.

"Why?" she asks, perhaps unwisely. "Is this about last night?"

They had one of their rare arguments the night before. It wasn't even that big of a deal, and Akane had given it little mind the following morning. Their fights are one of the precious few things left with them that could be considered normal. Sibling-like. Akane hates that they provide her yet another avenue where she can pretend like her fate isn't written for the next several years.

"Of sorts." Aoi gave a shrug, the one where he pretends he couldn't care less, but demonstrates there's not a thing he thinks about more. "But more than that, I can tell you're miserable there."

Akane is silent.

"Did he make that much of a difference?" Aoi's voice is heavy. "That Junpei kid?"

Akane deflects, as she always does. "A lot has changed, Aoi," she says, and she mimics the weight of his tone without thinking. "You know that."

"Even still."

She says nothing. How can she?

"Anyway, it's done," he says. "But it comes with a condition. You have to do something for me."

Akane stills, but she meets his gaze.

He hands her a card, and for a moment, she is taken backwards. Perhaps it's more accurate to say forward. It has two colors, blue and blue, with enough variance to split it in half. A single emblem of a book sits in the middle.

_The solar system keys and swipe cards._

Akane swallows, and Aoi misreads her gaze.

"You need to be doing something," he says, and Akane can't help it; she bristles. "With your mind, I mean. There is going to be a life for you when all of this is done, Akane. You are going to have something after that fucking boat."

It shouldn't feel so much like he's lying to her, but it does.

"Learn new things," he says. "That's the condition. Read one book a week, five in a day, I frankly don't give a rat's ass. Just do something."

Akane touches the library card. It feels more real to her than the couch underneath her.

"Okay," she says. "I can do that."

And she does.

It feels a bit like cheating when she combs the shelves for topics on glycerin, ice-9, the Titanic, even books on curses and hexes, although most of the latter is garbage. The feeling fades, though, because there is so _much_ on it, more than she touches on with Junpei on the ship in nine years. What she sees then merely gives her a springboard.

_The Queen of Random Knowledge._

Akane had always assumed that's a title given from what she is fated to say, but when she finds herself in a library chair surrounded by books with ISBN numbers and worn spines, she finds herself grinning.

She reads on morphogenetic field theory, naturally. But then she branches out: naturalism, probability, scientific theories. It burns the time much more efficiently than staring out the window, staring at texts that have nothing to do with her, dodging searing stares.

"Okay," Aoi says one night when she starts unloading her checked out items. "I'm pretty sure we can call that abusing your privileges."

The movie _Titanic_ sits on their kitchen table, the plastic wrap catching the kitchen light as if it's winking. Next to it is _The Velveteen Rabbit_ , a children's book she is far too old for. Akane blinks at him.

Then she dumps out a pile of other books, ranging from advanced geometry to religious theory. Aoi sighs.

"Okay, you've got me there."

So it goes.

Without the burden of feeling different from her peers, the expectation of the correct answers from teachers, and the ability to learn about whatever she pleased, Akane feels more solid, more like herself, than she has since... since Junpei, really. Aoi must see similar results, because he withdraws more and more into his computer.

When her brain feels overloaded, a rare feeling because of how many timelines she sorts out on a regular basis and books are really nothing in comparison, she watches him sometimes. Points out things on a macro level. Aoi is always patient, responding with mumbles and grunts, but after yet another pointless fight and she is going to scream if she solves for x one more time, he speaks when she takes her seat next to him.

"You don't have to be here."

That hurts her in a way that Akane often forgets Aoi is capable of. Her brother, full of sharp edges and rough planes that Akane has always managed to squeeze in between. She prides herself on being the only one who knows how to find her brother's softness, or perhaps it only exists for her anyway. She forgets that Aoi can wield words as weapons just as easily as a comfort.

She doesn't reply, not right away. She weighs each possible response as something that can shift them, because they can, _the pen is mightier than the sword_ , she knows her words have merit. She sits on Aoi's bed in her pajamas, her knees tucked up to her chest. She rests her chin on them, and thinks. _You're here because of me. Yes, I do. I know I don't._ So many options.

But what does she really have these days, besides the truth?

"I miss you," she says.

She expects some smart aleck response. She'd deserve it, anyway; how could anyone interpret the maelstrom her thoughts created most days? But Aoi's response is simple, austere.

"I miss you, too."

She does leave the room then, its only source of light the white glow of the monitor. She is taken back/forward to door 8, Lotus's rapid-fire fingers hovering over the keyboard. Either she sees her, or she sees her through Junpei's eyes. It is these memories that send her in a loop, the ones she knows she sees more than once.

Akane slides down the wall. Aoi deserves her full attention, all of her time. And yet it is the one thing she can never provide.

She cries at this notion, and although Aoi must hear her from in the room, he does not come out to comfort her. This, of course, is for her sake as much as anything else.

She goes in her room. She opens _The Velveteen Rabbit._ A story about a toy rabbit wanting desperately to become Real, even without understanding why.

She reads.

* * *

_four._

Things are carried out in much more rapid succession when Akane herself turns eighteen. Unlike Aoi, she dreads this day more than anything else. This is the point of no return. There is no coming back after this.

Besides that, she begins to feel the consequences of life.

There are moments her vision swims. When her temperature spikes, without much warning, but resolves in a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds. It's stress, she reasons. This is where her plans are really about to come to fruition, where she has to ask far too much of Junpei and continue to ask far too much of Aoi and endanger six other people. Another would die. Stress is plenty reason to feel sick.

But she knows the truth. It's more that Junpei is out there, living his life, growing older just like her, without thinking of his every move like she did.

She drives herself crazy, thinking of everything that's possibly happening out there to him. Perhaps he steps back from the curb just in time for a car to clip it. Perhaps he takes a different route home, involving dark alleys and insidious neighbors. Perhaps he needs his appendix taken out. There are too many avenues for her plan to go wrong. There are other timelines, Akane knows, where that car smashes his bones and turns his organs to pulp. Where he gets a literal knife in his back for daring a shortcut. Where he dismisses illness as something minor, and never gets treatment.

She will fade away in each and every one of these timelines. It is inevitable. It is fate. And she will leave her brother then, helpless to do anything but watch, even with his best efforts in the stock markets.

She wakes up screaming a lot more often, when she turns eighteen.

The minute Akane turns eighteen though, she is chomping at the same bit her brother did. Her stomach curdles like milk, her mind is constantly on edge from her fevers, and her fear she's just going to fall through the ground is still very much present. But there are some days where rage keeps her going, and her birthday is one of those days. She uses it: she ends up on the doorstep of Cradle Pharmaceuticals.

She doesn't have much to fear here, anyway. It has been six years since the first Nonary Game, and the main orchestrator happens to have a disorder that makes him unable to recognize faces. Regardless, her first thought upon reaching the sliding glass doors of the front entrance is _The Velveteen Rabbit_.

She didn't even check it out on purpose. She picked it up because she liked the cover. It's strange, though, how often Akane could substitute the word _accident_ for _fate._

A stuffed animal, taking a journey to become Real.

She meets little to no resistance in the front entrance, which surprises her. Perhaps it is the confidence of Akane's walk, or the palpable nature of her fury. Junpei used to tell her that all the time, anyway: head up, shoulders squared, one foot in front of the other.

_That won't make them like me more, Jumpy._

_No, but they'll leave you alone._

And Akane has never looked more out of place than in the front doors of a prestigious pharmaceutical company where her brother owns an obscene amount of the stocks. She resists the urge to mess with her clothing, which has progressed to sweater and skirt. Soon, she would layer up, with the dress and wrist warmers Jumpy would see. For now, the only thing that is the same is her scarf, where she has learned to layer her hair over and under it just right.

It occurs to her that this, just like so much else, is deliberate. Something to make the eye dance, something to cast an illusion. Anything to make her more than she is.

Real. Or something else.

"May I help you, miss?"

The little spell she's cast for herself is broken the minute this secretary approaches her. She actually sort of looks like her. Plain brown eyes, plain brown hair, plain chubby face. Yet she was dressed in a button down white blouse and a pencil skirt, and that seemed to be enough to make her expression tilt downwards with disdain.

It doesn't matter much to Akane. That sense of superiority seems to make everything droopy.

"Are you lost, miss?" Her tone follows the downward trajectory.

"I don't think so," Akane says, full of bubblegum brightness. "Cradle Pharmaceuticals, right? I haven't walked in the wrong door? This looks... pretty sanitized to me."

It isn't like Akane isn't prone to rambling, but this is deliberate, too. Nothing to see here. Nothing to take seriously. Just a silly, little girl lost in a big, important place. The only difficulty with this method is reaching Hongou.

"I see." Now this secretary's mouth curves downwards, the height of dismissal. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"I thought I'd look around," Akane says

"That's... not how this works." The secretary crosses her arms. "What's your name?"

Akane only hesitates for a beat. "June."

Her doll burns in her pocket.

"June," the secretary repeats, as if savoring the single syllable. "Easy enough. I am more than happy to answer questions, and point you towards appointments you can make with our staff, but otherwise, we have too much that leads to a security risk if we just let people _look around._ I'm sure you can understand."

"Okay," Akane replies. "I'll try. I'm looking for Hongou."

The silence that falls over what seems to be the entire building is thick, congealing, and all too satisfying. Akane can imagine this girl's face melting, masks and facades pooling into one disgusting puddle on the floor.

"Miss," she says. "I'll have to ask you to leave."

"I told you." Akane beams.

"You haven't told me anything. That's the problem." The girl's frail fingers curl around her elbow; Akane yanks purely out of reflex. Maybe a mistake, but Akane doesn't think so.

"Miss, I will call security –"

"What's the fuss about here?"

Something twists Akane's face, and for the first time, the secretary's features flashes with alarm, an expression that takes her seriously. Akane pictures what it is: a smile smeared with a snarl. Relief and hatred, an odd cocktail in her stomach.

The secretary does her best to explain, spinning away from her. "Sir! I was just explaining to her..."

"I believe I have the heads and tails of the situation, thank you," Hongou says curtly. His own sense of dismissal is much different than anyone else's. Akane has never forgotten it. Everyone else droops under its weight; Hongou somehow manages to stand even taller with it.

Akane cannot speak for a moment. She is full of explosions and heat and tears and hoarse voices. It takes far too long for her to cut through, but she does. She always does.

"I was hoping to see you," Akane says, and she extends her arm.

Hongou bristles; a girl like her shouldn't be offering her hand to shake, but then he notices the white piece of paper extended between her fingers. A business card, but not like any business card that Hongou has seen. It has two colors, two tones, a symbol of a key in the middle. And she is holding it so he can read the first two words.

_Crash Keys._

"Come with me," he says.

Akane should not take so much pleasure in the secretary's flabbergasted face; she has nothing to do with this. But she does. Even the smallest of victories hold pleasure for Akane, even if they are written in the tapestries of time.

She thinks of Mary Magdalene, again, apostle of apostles, saint of a cause much bigger than her. It makes her concentrate, her vision sharpen. She cannot count on her own eyes, her own senses, but the greater picture is different.

"What can I do for you, Miss...?"

"It doesn't matter."

It does not take much inflection for Akane's voice to turn cold. It matches the office Hongou led her towards. Now he'll know the name she fed to the receptionist is false.

"Let's talk about what you can do for me." She is back to all smiles. "It's about the Gigantic..."

* * *

"I hate that," Aoi complains.

"Hate what?" Akane asks, even though she knows. She doesn't need to access the morphogenetic field to see her brother's mind, how he thinks.

"You just spent millions of dollars on something we're not going to _use._ "

"That's not true," Akane says, and she sounds far away, even to herself. "We're going to use it. We have to restore that building."

"We don't need rights to a ship at the bottom of the sea..."

"We can't have anyone but Crash Keys investigating it," Akane counters.

"Where did you even come up with that stupid name, anyway?" Aoi throws up his hands, and Akane has time for the idle thought that this is a terrible plan since he is _driving._ Her temperature spikes, then evens out.

"I didn't," Akane says quietly.

Aoi sighs. The fight leaves him all in a rush, as it does with Aoi. "Right."

They drive in silence.

"Are you okay?"

It's a good question.

When she met with Hongou – Ace – whoever – his face gave no indication that it could melt into the same horror that met her outside heatproof glass. His smile was strained, but never gave her the impression that he could send a knife between Clover's ribs without a second thought. She never thought that he could murder two of his coworkers.

If she didn't know better, anyway.

"I always am," she says at last.

Aoi says nothing else, but his knuckles tighten around the steering wheel until they match his hair.

* * *

_five._

When Ace sends her emails to the encrypted program Akane created for Crash Keys, this is much more satisfying. Something about cold black and white doesn't send her to bad places, where she steps out of her own mind and forces to watch her body react. This is safer for her, anyway. The gooseflesh along her arms and the hairs on the back of her neck don't comprehend that Ace can't recognize faces. Akane starts layering her clothing more, pulling warmers to her wrists. The only thing that doesn't change are the socks and boots Aoi got for her.

When Akane is over nineteen, she hacks into Cradle Pharmaceutical's mainframe. They are too relaxed. Their CEO found a way to bury their deepest secret, or so they thought. It is silly, really, that all these people think their company is squeaky clean besides what they had done to eighteen children on a replica to the Titanic, as if they think this is a blip in their history and not a pattern.

Not a pattern of darkness, corruption, evil lurking in the human soul.

Akane's war on this godforsaken company is small, at first. Seemingly unrelated to her greater plan. Skimming off the surface of bookkeeping here. Sending a false email to suppliers there. Akane bites her lip. Her brother is blowing off steam at a pub, by himself, probably spurning the advances of women every five seconds. Akane can't claim to understand it, but he deserves it, he deserves a night off.

She nibbles at her thumbnail. It's a bit too long, anyway.

This is the realm where she hardly knows what she is doing. There is nothing from Junpei she can extract here. This is her own gut instinct guiding her along, not gently by the hand, but by making her sit in a dark room with the harsh glow of a monitor. Akane swallows as she runs a hand in her hair. There's only so long she can humor herself before it begins to feel pointless, and she begins to scroll the cursors to hit x's so she can shut down the computer.

She freezes when she sees it.

_Free the Soul._

She has never seen the name before, not through Junpei or anyone else, but it somehow sends her guts into a writhing whirlpool. She doesn't even remember the last time fear has been exclusively her own, something that hasn't been already written.

She swallows, and continues to read.

* * *

"Akane," Aoi sighs as he lurches through the front doorway. He teeters on his feet. His scarf and collar is pulled up to his chin, and he looks ridiculous, but it's a good way to ward off any attention, Akane supposed. Aoi plays hide and seek in plain sight, as is clear by how he handles his finances. He has several bank accounts, including some in her own name, and then some aliases from Crash Keys. No one would know just by looking at Aoi is a millionaire. But still...

Akane swallows. "You're right," she says. "From here on out, we need to play this game smarter."

Aoi stills. His eyes widen.

"We had to buy the rights to the Gigantic," she rushes on. "But we need to lay low until the second Nonary Game is completed. No unnecessary risks. You're still wearing the same thing you did, you probably need to change. And..."

"Akane," Aoi cuts her off. "What the fuck happened?"

Akane stands from her computer. "Read."

She had spent the last hour compiling any information she could on Free the Soul. It's precarious work, which alarms her somehow even more than the content she discovered. Akane should be scared, how much this could derail her plans, but she also understands this is much bigger than her. For once, she is thinking of life after the second Nonary Game.

Aoi finishes reading.

"Do you understand now," he says very quietly, "how much it freaks the shit out of me when you go to that forsaken church?"

_That's different_ , she wants to say, but even with the words sitting on her tongue, it feels like a lie. Doesn't she use that as justifying her own ends? How many times has she seen herself in the guise of Mary Magdalene?

"Okay," she says at last. "I won't go anymore."

That also feels like a lie, but it's worth it, in how Aoi's shoulders sagged.

"That said," he continues, "yes. This is fucked. And this is how Hongou financed what was done to us?"

"I just don't understand why," Akane says. "He had the money to do it without their help."

"A penny saved..."

Akane stops chewing on her lip. It is then she tastes blood.

"We lay low from here on out," Akane says. "I want to look into these guys."

Aoi studies her. His light eyes are a different kind of void.

"Okay," he says, surprising her. "Sure."

He gets up after he spends an adequate (barely) amount of time reading about this organization, and disappears into the bathroom. Akane takes his spot almost immediately. _Dashiel Gordain. Brother. Gentorou Hongou._

She wants to throw up. She wants to scream.

It is naive of her to think that when she saves her own life, this kind of pain in the world will end. She has been selfish. Suddenly, her death has context, a worldwide design.

She allows herself five minutes. And then she gets to work.

Aoi goes to sleep, and that's when she stands up. Her rage simmers in her stomach to a low boil. This is human domination. This is the end of the world.

Less than a year until the second Nonary Game.

* * *

_six._

They return from the old building in Nevada. Construction will continue for weeks after they leave, but they have a decent start. The most satisfying addition is that of the submarine, because as much as that timeline leaves her with screaming nightmares, at least Ace cannot get out alive. That matters, she tells herself. That Ace cannot get away with his crimes in almost any route they take. Minimizing damage. Maximizing casualties.

It's the only way, when there's only one possible happy ending.

When she steps off the plane, and begins the hustle of finding her baggage and weaving between unconcerned, exhausted people, that's when she sees Light for the first time since the first Nonary Game.

She stops. After a moment, Aoi stops next to her. She's about to whisper to him, but his sharp intake of breath tells her he sees him, too.

The boy she remembers has grown into his hands and feet, no longer an awkward thing but streamlined, tall elegance. Bony still, for sure, but he holds himself with the same propriety and pride that Akane imagines he was born with. She looks for Clover, but she is nowhere to be found, and Akane frowns. That's odd. Isn't that odd? She wonders what Light is doing here, alone, standing like a statue as others part around him.

She cannot ask. She can never ask.

It's a harsh reminder, that their lives cannot be any of her business. A wash of inexplicable anger seeps into her skin. She does care about these people. She does. Akane wants to wonder if Clover is okay or if Light is okay or if _Junpei_ is okay and not just because she needs them for a stupid fucking game...

"Akane," Aoi murmurs, as if he can hear her.

She grabs him by the arm.

"Are you insane?" she hisses. "He has the ears of a bat, what if he hears you..."

"What about you?" he shoots back, but his eyes are still on Light.

She opens her mouth to reply, but nothing comes out.

Because she recognizes something in her brother for once. She recognizes something that isn't fear, or pain, or grief, or agony.

No, this is _longing._

Akane does not say a thing, even when Aoi moves of his own accord, taking her by the elbow and dragging her along. She does not fight, but she does not make things easier for him either. She lets him sit with this, whatever she sees in his eyes.

Because she understands. Even though it can't be, even though it can _never_ be, she knows she wishes the boy standing back there is Junpei, not Light.

And it's sad, really, that she has to give herself permission to provide Aoi a single moment of happiness.

When she finally speaks, she's not surprised that Aoi flinches from her.

"You'll see him again," she says.

"Yeah," he says bitterly. "And that's the problem, isn't it?"

_Of course it is._

But even over the course of eight years, Aoi has never faltered. Not once. He carries out her plans to the letter. Her wish is his command.

"His name is Snake," she says.

"What?"

Akane breathes through her nose. "We have codenames, that we all call each other. He picks Snake, because his number is two. Clover goes with Clover. I'm June. Junpei is Junpei, because I don't keep my mouth shut." She's rambling, again. She's not even sure why she's telling him this in the first place.

Aoi processes this quietly, which she can scarcely believe. Then, suddenly...

"Who am I?"

For a moment, Akane can't breathe.

This is something that Akane had wanted to keep to herself as long as possible. It is something precious and sacred, and not much is these days, especially in their lives. But then she kicks herself. This is something she can give to her brother. Another small thing.

"Isn't it obvious?" Akane plays too cool. "You're 0, but it looks like a 3."

She watches it hit him.

"Santa," she whispers. "You're always Santa."

An emotion that Akane has seen too seldom to name crosses over his face like a riptide. He swallows, hard.

Because she's a coward, and she can't look at it for long, she steps forward and into her brother's arms. The sound of his breathing isn't better. It's low and pitched, as if he's holding back sobs. Even Akane forgets that Santa Claus isn't invincible.

"I knew," she tells him. "I always knew."

He takes a deep breath that is a little wet. Akane can practically hear door 6 click into place.

"Thank you," she says. "For being you."

* * *

In the later weeks, Aoi loses his scarf and jacket. His hair begins to spike upwards, instead of flat around his face. Again, this is not something Akane has to prompt from him. This is all on his own. It is not a phase of rebellion from him. He is not hiding a thing. It is like he has permission to be himself, and it brings tears to Akane's eyes.

It would also help no one to recognize him, anyway.

Akane's heart just about stops when a hole rips into the heel of her sock. She catches it when they both come home. Aoi is shivering from the night's cold, and he doesn't notice Akane tracing her bared skin with short little breaths.

_Locke's socks._

She remembers Clover's words. It takes her two hours to find a thread and needle, packed away in some dusty box untouched since her elementary school days. In that box, she also discovered her pink shirt, crested with a flower. She shrugs, and takes a small section.

She patches up that sock, and continues as normal.

* * *

_seven._

"The plan will work, Akane."

As always, that isn't in question, but she appreciates her brother's reassurances regardless.

"I need you to do a couple of things," she tells him. They are in a Jeep that Aoi bought last minute. He complains up a storm whenever they have to drive from Building Q in Nevada, instead of chartering a private plane, so just as well. This thing rattles like the last breaths of a dying elderly man, but it absorbs the shock of terrain like nothing else. She can imagine horseback riding in this thing, with the baked sun and the sands of the desert.

"I've done more than a couple of things," he responds dryly.

Akane smiles. Her lips crack from the heat. She can't help but run her tongue over them, even though it stings, for some hope of moisture.

"They're important," she says. She hands him a bookmark, the one with the four leaf clover. He stiffens, even as he drives over the open sands, and she's grateful there isn't much to hit out here besides the occasional cactus. When she thinks he won't take it, he does, sliding it in his pants pocket.

"Anything else?" he asks, his tone composed carefully neutral.

Akane has changed into her purple dress with black scarf. She somehow found arm warmers to match her socks, even though Aoi bought them for her ages ago.

"I need to borrow the Jeep once we arrive," she says. "There's someone I need to speak to."

Aoi frowned. "He's in Nevada?"

Akane can't help it: she smiles. Aoi has gotten better and better at receiving, even without being trapped in the Gigantic. They have always been on a wavelength that transcended being brother and sister. They had gone through far too much.

"He never stopped investigating," she responds.

Aoi's face softens. It's always something to behold, when that happens.

"Should I come with you?"

Akane shakes her head. "No. Finish preparations. Make sure the recordings are solid. And make sure our additional company is in transit."

She has no interest in seeing their additional company from Cradle Pharmaceuticals, the only ones who would not survive the Nonary Game in any timeline besides Hongou. But Aoi takes a certain level of satisfaction with them, from leading these men to their deaths.

"Okay. Be careful."

She is. She doesn't drive with the same level of manic energy her brother does, and as such, it takes her longer to find Seven's shack out in the middle of this particular brand of nowhere. Even with a GPS, she thinks that she's lost several times, until she finds it: something unassuming and unobtrusive, which is nothing like the man inside it.

She parks off in the distance. Sand travels down her boots as she finds the front door and knocks.

"Come in."

Akane frowns. She isn't expecting that.

She steps inside. Seven hasn't changed much at all, and she isn't sure why she expected that. He has nothing but the bare necessities here: jugs of water, piles of dishes, hanging clothes. His stove is more a fireplace than stove. She doubts he has pipes or anything running out here.

"Akane."

She pauses. "How did you know?"

He laughs. "I don't think I'll ever forget your faces."

"No," she says. "At the door."

"Who else could it be?"

Thinking of dunes and tumbleweeds, she supposes it's a good point.

"I knew you would come," he says, settling on a tattered couch. "One day."

Akane smiles.

"I need your help."

* * *

Later that night, she finds herself in the library – the Forest of Knowledge.

A lot of this is her doing: Hongou used this room as a puzzle, sure, and his preservation of the library was impressive, but she couldn't resist adding on to it, making this room, if nowhere else, a little bit her own. She adds on based on her studies as a child, the ones she created on her own.

She trails a thumb over the spines of the books, feeling the engraving of letters underneath her nails. She closes her eyes, allowing the feeling of dust and turned pages to fill her senses, to dig deep in her sinuses. For a moment, she imagines Mary Magdalene. _The Velveteen Rabbit_. Even Santa Claus.

The fancies of children, yet granters of wishes.

* * *

_eight._

"Akane!"

She's usually so hot during her fevers, but this time, she is cold. Her lips crack like the desert around them. She leans her head against the passenger seat window, and she can't keep her eyes open for the life of her. This time, she _knows_ she can feel her hand slip through the hand rest of the car door. She can feel her eyes roll in her head – she can't control it.

"Akane!"

Aoi is yelling at her from the driver's seat, and he pumps the gas like that has any say in her fate, in this journey to becoming Real. Akane tightens her grip on the arm rest until she can feel her nails digging into the fabric.

"'M fine," she mumbles, but she knows this has the potential to becoming the most tragic of timelines. That after all this work, all this trouble and second guessing, she could fade away and leave Aoi with several million dollars and a sister vanished and dispersed. It's not fair. _It's not fair._

Her tears feel like specters on her own face.

She digs her hand in the glovebox and finds June. She remembers Junpei christening the doll, and then Akane herself. The month they split apart. The sixth month of the year. An upside down nine. _June._

She prays.

She holds on.

* * *

_nine._

It's only when he sees her smile that Aoi relaxes.

"Thank fucking God," he says. "The little shit bastard did it."

Akane doesn't even tell him to mind his language. Her eyes are still closed, but her smile takes over her face, big and aching. The book is wrong, she thinks. Real is beautiful; Real is this pain that blooms like a massive flower in her chest.

"Please tell me you have chapstick," Akane says.

He laughs, big and booming, and she's never, _ever_ heard him laugh like that. She cracks her eyes open to see it take over his whole body, a kind of relief that explodes when touched.

"Of all the fucking things to ask for..." he mutters, but he digs through his pocket. "Yeah, give me a second."

"You're still Santa," she says.

Aoi's gaze softens one more time, and she's fairly certain he's going to wreck the car given how long he fixes that fond look on her. "Sure," he says, handing her a chapstick. He doesn't let go of her hand for several moments. "Always."

When he releases her, he puts all of his focus on driving. "Are you sure you don't want to see him?"

Akane is shaking her head before he can even finish his statement. "I can't."

He doesn't argue with her. Ultimately, he understands.

There were so many times she was convinced, that despite her visions and knowing otherwise, that this plan would fail. Seven crashed his head into the ceiling just right in the beginning of the Game, but unlike Junpei, he lost his memory before waking up. Ace seemed to vibrate between sanity and insanity, and just a single word could sway him otherwise. Clover and Snake. So much hung on a knife's edge.

Only Junpei, sure and certain and unapologetically himself, remained a constant.

"By the way, I'm mad at you," Akane says.

"What? Why?"

"'The one closest to you could stab you in the back?' _Really?_ "

Aoi's grin was one of shit-eating, unapologetic joy. "I thought it was rather on the nose."

"I wanted to punch you in the face nine years ago, and I wanted to then."

"You would never."

It was true. Akane has never felt so light. Any tap from her would feel like feathers, she's sure. For an instant, her smile slips.

As always, Junpei catches up with her.

Not here, not physically. Akane has her brother putting pedal to the metal, and this is the part where she can no longer see a thing he does. She doesn't know what he does from here; she can't know. He disconnects from her, a transmitter, and even though the relief of his last words remains, she cannot know how he truly feels. How bursting up the staircase and into the sun will feel.

She knows how it felt for her. Relief. Stark relief. But also fear, and bitter, bitter rage.

She cannot watch as Junpei possibly hates her for everything she's done.

As they drive further and further, Akane begins to think of Free the Soul. What must be done to stop _them._

She's no longer sure where her love for Junpei ends and her obsession begins.

* * *

At the safehouse where they will continue operations for years, the edges of Akane's socks fall off. She stares at the edges of the fabric in her hands. She could stitch them back on; they are mostly intact. She could use them for something else. Instead, she takes her brother's arm warmers – he insists he's too fucking cold without a jacket from here on out - and uses them to patch her socks.

Black. All black.

She is brand new, something else entirely.

* * *

END


End file.
